A good week for Snarky Wonk

I was asked for a reaction to the recent report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) that the FCC is "the third most expensive" agency in terms of costing industry and estimated it cost industry $185 billion (approximately) to comply with various FCC regs (largely in forgone profits, apparently -- which is actually a good measure of monopoly rents if I believed it).

My response? As printed in Comm Daily today.

"I can make numbers up too," Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld said in response to the report. "I estimate that responding to nonsense like this cost government agencies millions of dollars, and costs the public billions of dollars in lost economic activity and direct cost to consumers. Mindyou, I just made that up, but it seems about as reliable as CEI's estimates."

But the "summer camp" line about the ITIF report showing that our national broadband is not so bad compared to other nations for Ars Technica got a lot more play.